It is interesting what all you can learn while doing historical research. I was on a panel with Lincoln Henderson from Brown-Forman once and the subject of Tennessee whiskey came up. He started talking about the "leaching process" and how it effects the whiskey when I mentioned that the charcoal also lowers the PH of the product literally "sweetening" the whiskey. He turned to me and said I thought you were a historian, not a chemist or words to that affect. I then had to tell him that I learned this while working with the historical file for George Dickel. Mida's Criteria wrote a story about Tennesee whiskey and stated that this was so back at the turn of the century and Schenley did an independent test to see if it was true. I was just quoting history.
Mike Veach